Anna Lappé sticks up for organics

And tackles Fast Company

By Culinate staff

September 13, 2011

In late August, the magazine Fast Company ran a brief article on Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, the chairman of the international food company Nestlé, in which he asserted that organic food had no future.

Food activist Anna Lappé promptly took up his challenge in a blog post cross-posted from Civil Eats on Fast Company’s own website, rebutting his claims by ticking off all the reasons organic food can indeed save the planet.

Chief among her pro-organic arguments? The fact that industrial agriculture depends on resources (including petroleum for farm machinery, potable water for irrigation, and phosphorus for fertilizer) that are not only dwindling fast, they’re responsible for a wide range of environmental degradation, ranging from agricultural runoff to radioactive waste.

In other words, it’s the industrial-agriculture model that has no future, not organics.